Police: download a file, go to jail for 10 years and pay an “unlimited” fine

The 70,000 daily visitors to popular music site RnBXclusive.com were met with a purposely terrifying message on Tuesday and part of Wednesday. The UK's Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) took the site down, arrested its operator, and threw up a splash page that warned downloaders of "up to 10 years imprisonment." Thought statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringement in the US were ludicrous? SOCA warns that downloaders from the site could face an "unlimited fine under UK law."

SOCA also showed users their own IP address and warned that "the above information can be used to identify you and your location," adding that "SOCA has the capability to monitor and investigate you, and can inform your Internet service provider of these infringements."

Didn't get the message? The warning goes on to say, "You may be liable for prosecution and that fact that you have received this message does not preclude you from prosecution."

SOCA announced separately on Wednesday that the rather theatrical warning (our judgment, not their words) would only stay up for 32 hours, apparently as a way to reach the site's regular visitors. (The notice has now been removed.)

"The website in question specialised in RnB and enabled access to music obtained by hacking, including some which had not yet been released," SOCA said in its statement. "[Global music trade group] IFPI estimates losses to legitimate businesses and artists caused by the site to be £15m a year. During the week running up to arrest phase the website had 70,000 users daily, mainly males aged 18 to 25 years."

SOCA agents stress that they have "monitored responses" to the arrest and takedown, including watching people discuss it globally on Twitter. They claim that related sites have already cleaned up their act to avoid similar action.

While RnBxclusive.com might have been a hive a scum and villainy, SOCA agents hardly give the impression of acting as neutral agents of justice. The takedown was clearly pushed by the recording industry, which in itself is fine; all sorts of private parties complain to police when laws have been broken. But the SOCA warning page on RnBxclusive.com went well beyond a mere legal statement and warning.

"As a result of illegal downloads young, emerging artists may have had their careers damaged," it said. "If you have illegally downloaded music you will have damaged the future of the music industry."

The extraordinary statement—opening as it does with the frank admission that this is all unprovable ("may") and concluding with an odd remark (the "music industry" is hardly synonymous with the "recording industry" actually being assisted here)—sounds like the sort of moralizing argument that is more appropriately the domain of rightsholders than the police. The coppers then provide a link directing visitors to pro-music.org, a site actually run by the recording industry.

A model of restraint

Even the US government, which we have criticized repeatedly for the process and errors behind their own "Operation In Our Sites" domain takedowns, has recently been a model of professionalism by contrast.

By all means, police should enforce the law and the government should prosecute those who violate it. But there's a line between enforcing the law and becoming the publicly funded enforcement arm of a particular industry, uncritically promoting their loss estimates, arguments, and websites.

Food popo,grammar popo,Internet popo, next thing thing you know they will be a TP popo.

Heard today on the news that a child's lunch from home was deemed unhealthy and the school took the child's lunch from them and made them eat cafertia food and sent the child home with a bill for the school lunch. The kid had a turkey and cheese sandwich,a fruit and apple juice. The school made the kid eat deep fried chicken nuggets.

It is not a coincidence that 1984 was set in (a version of) the UK. Both major political parties are very cavalier when it comes to civil liberties, and the junior coalition partner has done a complete 180 on their liberal principles. This was to be expected.

I'm confident this is SOCA being stupid rather than evil, in an old-bill-scaring-the-kids-straight kind of way, but that's still not acceptable. They need to be more savvy than this. Lord knows how they hope to catch any serious and organised criminals if the RIAA can run rings round them.

Interestingly, the £15M loss figure, while certainly at the top end, amounts to around £200 per daily user, which isn't beyond the realms of sanity for an 18 to 25 year old male to spend on music. Not likely to be close to actual losses but not crazy either.

Fortunately, for fans of insanity, there's that jail term and fine. Anyone know the harshest penalty the UK courts have actually handed out for downloading music?

It seems rather unprofessional for law enforcement to be acting as propaganda agents. If they have the legal right to take down the site then do so and provide an explanation for why it was taken down, include the information that the owners have been charged with a crime if that is relevant.

But to deliberately conflate alleged copyright infringement with "stolen" and tell people they may have "damaged the future of the music industry" is, as the article stated, "theatrical" at best (have the owners even been convicted yet?).

No it's not. It's all down to George Orwell being English. Had he lived some place else, it would have been set there instead. His ideas apply universally but, for some reason, people always drag his work up only in relation to stories which refer to the UK rather than those which have a significant resonance with the book.

"In any state of society where crime can be profitable you have got to have a harsh criminal law and administer it ruthlessly." -- George Orwell

At least we know that these are quite grave accusations since the Serous Organized Crime Agency is involved. I probably would have paid no attention if it was just another round up from the Flippant Bumbling Crime Agency.

Brilliant, here in the UK we let any terrorist in, any rapist in, and we can't deport them back to their third world countries they came from, because they have human rights. Then we give them money for a house, and money for their children, and provide them with free health care and legal expenses to argue their case.

I wrote e-mails to some artists and recording companies, letting them know that I knowingly stole good music. That's right, that's what they get for not letting me buy the songs I like. Everywhere I keep getting "Not available for your country", so I'll keep stealing. And even if they make it available, I'll continue stealing, to make it up for my frustration, time wasted trying to buy, and for this discrimination.

In America, at least the police and government are pretending to hide their link to organized crime. It looks like in the UK, they are refreshingly blunt in their admitting that they have an agency just to work for Serious Organized Criminal like their RIAA counterpart.